Mumbai: When officials from the state health department went door to door in Maharashtra’s Malegaon to survey households for Covid symptoms in April, most residents refused to cooperate. They feared that under the guise of battling Covid, the government was attempting to collect information about them for the controversial National Register of Citizens.
Simultaneously, there were communally-sensitive WhatsApp messages doing the rounds. People with symptoms stopped going to doctors for the fear of the entire family being quarantined. Moreover, even as Eid was around the corner, the town, with heavy police bandobast looked more like a fortress than a festive Muslim locality, taking the tension up a notch.
These were among the several peculiar challenges that the administration faced in Malegaon — a town in Maharashtra’s Nashik district known to have a long history of communal unrest — as the number of Covid-positive cases surged to over 900. Malegaon is also one of the most densely populated towns in the country with 19,000 people per square kilometre.
But from a doubling rate of 2.33 days on 15 April, the growth of Covid-positive cases plummeted to a doubling rate of 46 by 25 May, and further to 126 by 22 June. The town has recorded 943 Covid cases as of 22 June but of these only 8 per cent — or 75 cases — are active now, according to data with the Malegaon Municipal Corporation.
Behind the rapid improvement in numbers is a story of how the civic administration and the Malegaon police used extraordinary measures to contain the Covid crisis in a town that is a cocktail of poverty and population density with undercurrents of communal strife.
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Social media monitoring, isolation of Hindu and Muslim localities
Among the first things that the district administration did was to crack down on divisive social media content.
Sample this: “Koi maulana ke khilaf bole toh vivadit ho jata hain, aur yahan sadhu maar diye jaye tab bhi Bharat khamosh rehta hain. Jago Hindu jago (Anyone speaking against a maulana becomes controversial, and here India is silent even after ascetics are killed. Wake up, Hindus, wake up).” This was among the many WhatsApp forwards doing the rounds.
Another TikTok video being circulated showed a man wiping his nose and licking currency notes, while saying, “Welcome to India, coronavirus”, adding that the virus was “divine punishment without any remedy”.
According to data with the Malegaon Municipal Corporation, almost 70 per cent of the Covid-positive cases are from the Muslim side of the town. In this backdrop, another video went viral fuelling suspicion that the hectic activity and door-to-door surveys on the Muslim side were linked to the NRC.
The social media messages were potentially explosive given Malegaon’s history of communal riots and bomb blasts. Earlier this year, Malegaon also witnessed widespread protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act and the proposed NRC.
“We scanned social media for these kinds of messages very closely, registered offences and even made arrests as a deterrent. The town has a history of communal tension, but the entire period of the lockdown was very peaceful. There has not been even a single adverse incident,” said Arti Singh, Superintendent of Police, Nashik, under whose jurisdiction Malegaon falls.
The Mausam river runs between the Hindu and Muslim settlements of Malegaon. They are connected by eight bridges across the river.
“Barring one bridge, which was left open only for movement of essential services, police and municipal staff, we barricaded all the other bridges and isolated the two sides,” Singh said.
The police had even imposed restrictions on how much fuel petrol pumps are allowed to sell to ensure that people cannot step out beyond what is essential. The town also had a very heavy police bandobast. At its peak, there were 1,800 personnel deployed on the ground.
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Clerics, mosque loudspeakers roped in for Covid fight
Every day, twice a day, announcers in the mosques of Malegaon would appeal to people to stay indoors, take the threat of Covid seriously and report any symptoms to doctors.
“Initially, people were just not willing to report any symptoms because they feared that their entire family would be put under institutional quarantine,” Mufti Mohammed Ismail, the AIMIM MLA from the Malegaon Central constituency, said.
“Civic officials invited our religious heads into the control room and appealed to them to talk to people about the gravity of the situation. Their influence really helped in getting people to report symptoms and follow the lockdown.”
There was also fear that Eid celebrations could lead to a spurt in the number of cases.
“People kept asking us that if 50 people are allowed to gather for a wedding, why not for Eid. We tried to explain that a wedding is a family affair, while a religious festival is a community affair,” Singh, the Nashik SP, said.
“A day before Eid, the Malegaon police, myself included, along with the Centre’s Rapid Action Force led a flag march in each and every nook and corner of the town, appealing to people to celebrate Eid indoors. On the day of the festival, not a single person was on the streets.”
She added, initially the clerics too had the same argument, but agreed to cooperate with the administration. “Their words went a long way,” Singh said.
The administration then turned to infrastructure. Before the Covid crisis, the Malegaon Municipal Corporation had a bed capacity of 100. Caught off guard, it hurriedly ramped up the number to almost 2,500 now, set up 15 fever clinics and a mobile dispensary.
While work on the hard infrastructure was underway, the civic body also included some soft gestures as part of its standard operating procedure (SOP).
“We made special arrangements to serve meals to Muslim and Hindu patients as per their food habits and timings. For Eid, we distributed dates,” said Nitin Kapadnis, deputy municipal commissioner.
Police personnel, civic officials tested positive
Besides the poor healthcare infrastructure, one of the initial challenges for the administration and the police was their own testing positive.
As the awareness about Covid grew, and cases started cropping up within the police and civic body, people in the town started refusing to provide them with any kind of services.
“We found it difficult to provide our force with accommodation, food as vendors feared transmission. We had to cajole them into giving us these services,” Singh said.
A total of 192 police personnel tested Covid-positive, while three constables died. In the civic body too, 27 employees and officials, including the municipal commissioner and the additional municipal commissioner, tested positive.
Things are now slowly getting back to normal in this riverside town, officials say. For starters, the number of new cases each day is now almost negligible.
Police deployment has reduced to a third, with 600 personnel posted around the town.
The barricades on the eight bridges linking the Muslim and the Hindu sides too are now more porous. “Barring two or three bridges, we mostly open them now,” Kapadnis said.
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In Puri rath yatra no public was allowed.. only the police and sevayats performed the ritual.. whole Puri was under curfew during that time… this info is for the uninformed
Eid not allowed because it was a community affair, so why was puri Jagannath rath yatra allowed. Was it a family affair to be allowed or political gimmick/majority appeasement trying to satisfy your voter base!
Sanity in India is definitely going down the drain with each passing day.